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I get this shit all the time (not that that makes me special in any way).

Honestly, I don't think anyone falls for it, really. Once they hear that they will have to do 100% of the real work and that the other person just comes up with ideas (but still retains the majority of the shares), any sane person would walk out.

What's interesting is I've never met someone who came to me with a business idea who had an actual business plan or any other indicators that they've done something. These people seem to think that their single thought is equivocal to a year (if not more) of my time in development.

Idea guys are a dime a dozen... Always such big dreams for a worn-out unimaginative idea, which at best is just another "me too" product. They'll want you to sign an NDA just to hear their unmarketable idea, and work for free (aka "revenue sharing"), because evidently they don't even believe in it enough to invest their own money. Don't tell them you're a developer, especially if you have mobile experience or web app experience, or they'll latch on like a bunch of parasites.

If they do find out what you do, here's an example of how you weed out the bullshitters (ie 99.9% of them):

1) "I don't work for free. If your idea is so good, then surely you believe in it enough to invest money into paying me a fair market wage."

2) "I prefer not to sign NDA's, but will do so for a $3000 fee and a minimum commitment of at least 8 billable hours of work."

Two simple statements, and you'll be rid of the ones who don't have their shit together (ie nearly all of them).

IME self-made business leaders tend to say "Sell the product, THEN produce it." If the idea is so great, the idea man should have no problem raising the capital necessary to pay a team of developers to implement it.

During the late-90s tech boom people came up with random ideas and other people invested just because the ideas involved tech somehow. Some of that mindset seems to be continuing on, and people tend to think that developers are a dime a dozen but ideas are uniquely valuable snowflakes to be revered and protected.

people tend to think that developers are a dime a dozen but ideas are uniquely valuable snowflakes to be revered and protected.

I suppose that the comment you are answering doesn't think that you have to make a product for every idea, but that ideas are "a dime a dozen" and that developers are "valuable snowflakes to be revered and protected."

My job title on Facebook is set to "One-Man pre-revenue startup" after reading a massive pile of work-for-me-free euphemisms in a job posting: they were a "pre-revenue startup" looking for you to "commit sweat equity" (the kind of equity outlawed by the Emancipation Proclamation, by the sound of it)

Ideas are worthless. Every programmer has several great ideas he would love to work on if only he had the time. But turning those ideas into reality is a massive undertaking. That hard work is what creates the value.

It happens, best thing to do is be straight with them. Tell them you don't work for free. You have to remember it's their idea, they think it's the best freaking idea ever and because it's so good it must be worth a lot. But the reality is it's not. Tell them that their idea is just an idea and not actually worth anything. The value comes from execution.

What will happen is you will put in hours and hours of work and in the end what you've worked on is worth nothing.

I also think at least 80% of the work ends up being done by the dev(s). I recommend negotiating at least 50% equity (I say only 50% because good luck ever getting more than that)

You might be thinking to yourself they will just go to some other poor dev who will work for free and if that's the case it probably isn't someone you want to work for anyway. You just can't work for free, you have costs, you need to live too.

I usually point them in the direction of some seed money/grants and tell them to work on those. If they get more serious and have some money to offer for development then I will gladly work for them.

I always love the slick sounding ones like this, she hits all the buzzwords and useless jargon and makes all of her skills sound great, until you realize they're completely useless in the start-up phase.

Also social networking is done. Everyone is doing it and your odds of being the next reddit or facebook is so miniscule, it isn't worth the time spent thinking about it. We, as a society, are far too connected as it is.

We use phone screens to weed people out, but I am counting those in the 200. When you work for one of the top 3 tech companies in the world the hiring bar is much higher than everyone other tech company, and you get a ton of people applying that aren't qualified.

Given that 90% of everything is crap, you have no more than 20 on-sites; since anyone with 2 neurons to rub together knows that resumes go through automated filtering and clueless HR people before the phone screen, they will retaliate by spamming companies. Given that 90% of your on-sites are also crap (EDIT: as in, your interview process will fail), only 2 of those 20 coin-flips are right. I could do the actual probabilities, but you're down in dice-roll territory.

I disagree. Working for one of the top tech companies in the world means everyone wants in. The cost of making a bad hire is huge. You pay them a ton of money over a year while they fail to contribute, and then they have to let the person go, which puts the team back a ton and is generally a horrible experience for everyone involved.

More than 90 percent of those interviews don't pass phone screens because they can't code, and most of them fail fizzbuzz questions...

If they happen to pass the interviews, not everyone accepts the offer. Generally good candidates know they are good and will also be getting offers from then other major tech companies before making a decision.

The people aren't failing interviews because of bad HR practices, they fail because they don't pass our technical hiring bar.